Monitoring metrics for IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
IBM Cloud services, such as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, generate platform metrics that you can use to gain operational visibility into the performance and health of the service in your account.
IBM Cloud Monitoring is a third-party cloud-native, and container-intelligence management system that can be included as part of your IBM Cloud architecture. It offers administrators, DevOps teams, and developers full-stack telemetry with advanced features to monitor and troubleshoot, define alerts, and design custom dashboards. For more information, see Monitoring in IBM Cloud.
You can use IBM Cloud Metrics Routing, a platform service, to route platform metrics in your account to a destination of your choice by configuring targets and routes that define where platform metrics are sent. For more information, see About IBM Cloud Metrics Routing in IBM Cloud.
You can use IBM Cloud® Monitoring to visualize and alert on metrics that are generated in your account and routed by IBM Cloud Metrics Routing to an IBM Cloud Monitoring instance.
Locations where metrics are generated
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service sends metrics in all supported regions.
Enabling metrics for IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
To enable monitoring for your cluster, connect your cluster to a monitoring service instance that exists in your IBM Cloud account. You can enable monitoring in existing clusters, or during cluster create time. The monitoring service instance must belong to the same IBM Cloud account where you created your cluster, but can be in a different resource group and IBM Cloud region than your cluster.
Note that a cluster can only be connected to one monitoring service instance at a time. You can change which monitoring service instance a cluster is connected in to in the console by disconnecting the cluster from one instance and then connecting to a different instance.
Enable monitoring in an existing cluster
- If you do not already have a monitoring service instance in your account, create one.
- In the console, navigate to the cluster resource page and click on the relevant cluster.
- Under Integrations, find the monitoring option and click Connect.
- Select the monitoring service instance you want to connect to your cluster. If you have more than one monitoring service instance, you can filter them by the region they were created in.
- Click Connect.
Enable monitoring while creating a cluster
- If you do not already have a monitoring service instance in your account, create one.
- In the cluster create UI, configure you cluster as required.
- In the Observability integrations section, enable the Monitoring option.
- Select the monitoring instance you want to connect to your cluster. If you do not have a monitoring instance in your account, or if you want to create a new monitoring instance, select Create one.
- Continue configuring the cluster.
Viewing metrics
To view your metrics, navigate to your cluster resource page in the console and click on the relevant cluster. In the Integrations section, find the Monitoring option and click Launch. A separate window opens where you can view your cluster metrics.
Launching IBM Cloud® Monitoring from the Observability page
For more information about launching the IBM Cloud Monitoring UI, see Launching the UI in the IBM Cloud Monitoring documentation.
Monitoring IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
With IBM Cloud Monitoring, you can collect cluster and pod metrics, such as the CPU and memory usage of your worker nodes, incoming and outgoing HTTP traffic for your pods, and data about several infrastructure components. For more information, see Monitoring cluster health.
Migrating to the new monitoring agent
The observability CLI plug-in ibmcloud ob and the v2/observe endpoints are deprecated and support ends on 28 March 2025. You can now manage your logging and monitoring integrations from the console or through the Helm
charts. For the latest steps, see Working with the Kubernetes agent or Working with the Red Hat OpenShift agent.
If you have a monitoring agent installed that uses the deprecated ibmcloud ob plug-in, you must migrate to a new agent.
- Check whether you need to migrate by running the following command.
ibmcloud ob monitoring config ls --cluster <cluster> - If the output shows a config, delete it.
ibmcloud ob monitoring config delete --cluster INSTANCE --instance INSTANCE - Install the new monitoring agent. For more information, see the following links.